ALF LANDON, G.O.P. STANDARD-BEARER, DIES AT 100

Published: October 13, 1987

Correction Appended

Alfred M. Landon, the former Governor of Kansas who gained lasting fame for his landslide defeat by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 Presidential election, died at his home in Topeka yesterday, 34 days after his 100th birthday.

Mr. Landon was released on Saturday from Stormont-Vail Regional Medical Center, where he had been treated for a gallstone and a mild case of bronchitis. He had entered the medical center on Sept. 28.

A man of enduring good spirits, he was undaunted by his overwhelming defeat for the Presidency and continued to exert influence in the Republican party. On Sept. 6, three days before he turned 100, President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, stopped off in Topeka to pay tribute to the man who had become known as the G.O.P.'s ''grand old man.''

''In a hundred years,'' Mr. Reagan said, ''Alf Landon has chased many dreams and caught most of them.'' Won Only Maine and Vermont

Mr. Landon, whose daughter Nancy Landon Kassebaum, is a Republican Senator from Kansas, was more modest, describing himself in an interview four years ago as ''an oilman who never made a million, a lawyer who never had a case and a politician who carried only Maine and Vermont.''

Not until 1984 did a Presidential candidate win fewer states than Mr. Landon did in 1936. Walter F. Mondale won only Minnesota and the District of Columbia.

With Mr. Landon at the time of his death were his wife of 57 years, Theo, and a housekeeper, Rita Dwight. Ms. Dwight said Mr. Landon simply stopped breathing at 5:25 P.M. He had been alert earlier in the day.

Mrs. Landon, who is 11 years younger than her husband, said: ''I thought we would have him a little while longer. But he had accomplished everything a person can accomplish. He was very proud he made it to 100, and he was so pleased that the President came to see him.'' Active to the End

Mr. Landon remained active until his hospitalization last month. Each morning, it was his custom to walk nearly a quarter of a mile, aided by his cane and with Ms. Dwight at his side. He encouraged friends to visit, and one day this summer 11 friends dropped in at the Landon home.

Mrs. Kassebaum, who had a speaking engagement last night in Hartford, Conn., went to Topeka after learning of her father's death.

In a statement from the White House last night, President Reagan said: ''Alf Landon exemplified the very best in public service. He deeply loved his country and he was motivated by a genuine desire to help his fellow man.''

The Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole, a fellow Kansan, said last night that Mr. Landon was ''a legendary Republican who taught generations of politicians what integrity and leadership were all about.'' Took Loss With Humor

He displayed the same sense of humor a month after the election, when, as the outgoing Governor of Kansas, he addressed the Gridiron Club, an organization of Washington newspapermen.

''If there is one state that prepares a man for anything, it is Kansas,'' he said. ''The Kansas tornado is an old story. But let me tell you of one. It swept first the barn, then the outbuildings. Then it picked up the dwelling and scattered it all over the landscape.

''As the funnel-shape cloud went twisting its way out of sight, leaving nothing but splinters behind, the wife came to, to find her husband laughing.

''She angrily asked him, 'What are you laughing at, you darned old fool?'

Roosevelt, running for his second term, won 27,747,636 votes to 16,679,543 for his Republican rival. Mr. Landon received 8 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 523.

The plurality of 11,068,093 in the popular vote stood as a record until 1964, when with 30 million more voters President Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater by 15,948,746 votes. Even so, the Arizona Republican carried six states with 52 electoral votes.

The plurality mark was broken again in 1972 when President Nixon won re-election by 17,998,388 more votes than George McGovern. The South Dakota Democrat carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, for 17 electoral votes.

Mr. Landon could bear his defeat with equanimity partly because he had had no real hope of winning and partly because he did not fear for the future of the nation, as many of his fellow Republicans did, if Roosevelt was re-elected.

Throughout his life Mr. Landon was a member of his party's liberal wing. As Governor of Kansas he endorsed many of the most controversial aspects of the New Deal. He respected and admired Roosevelt.

Despite all this, Mr. Landon came to be thought of in later years as the prototype of Middle Western provincialism and conservatism.